by Ann Ripley
Louise was supposed to come in at eleven. That would give her plenty of time to think of what to say, and what not to say, to this unappealing man.
She swooped her long brown hair off her neck and secured it with a big barrette. Then she climbed back into her new jeans. Well, she was involved now—in not just one death, but two.
“Oh, my God,” she said softly, “what will I tell Bill?”
Then the phone rang again. This time it was her husband.
“You mean, the daughter of a rancher supposedly shot by a poacher went off a cliff in her car?”
“They think it was an accident.”
“Louise.” Bill’s voice on the other end of the phone line was ominously quiet. “I don’t know what’s going on around there, but don’t believe that story. Damn. I don’t have time for this. I don’t know how you came to get mixed up in some land deal mess. Now, listen. I’m not that far away. If things get rough, call this number.” He gave her a phone number with a Virginia area code: Langley. The CIA would patch the call through to him, if an emergency big enough reared its head.
Now the voice was stern. “I would also like you to stay in close touch with Janie.”
“Of course I will. And I have nice neighbor s—Herb, and Herb’s wife, Ellie, who I hear makes good cookies. Look, I’m so removed from this thing you wouldn’t believe it. I’ll talk to the sheriff this morning, and that will be the end of it.”
“The sheriff? Is that what you call being removed?”
“Ann, the county officer, and I were among the last people to talk to Sally—but neither one of us heard anything that’s going to be helpful.”
Louise felt guilty. In spite of how preoccupied he was with his own business, Bill was now worried about her. So she was not surprised, just before leaving the house, to receive a phone call from her daughter at the YMCA Camp in Estes Park.
“How’s wilderness camp, darling?”
“Ma,” the exuberant voice answered, “I love it. The concept, the mountains, the people—especially my fellow counselors.” A pause while the teenager arranged some tactful words. “And—how are ya makin’ out there on your own?” Her voice seemed to have acquired a twang.
“Janie, I know your father put you up to this phone call. But I’m fine, and I don’t need you to worry about me.”
“Promise me you’ll call if things get weird, Ma?”
“Promise.”
“Well, then, I have a little fourteen-thousand-footer to climb, and someone terrific to climb it with.”
“Someone?” Louise thought it was probably healthy for Janie to find new male interests at camp; that would relieve the intensity of her friendship with Chris back home. “Who is this terrific person?” she said, and bit her tongue as soon as the words were out. Her relationship with her seventeen-year-old no longer included direct questions like that.
“Well, Ma”—Louise could tell the pause was for some quick thinking—“let’s just say that he’s the coolest guy I’ve met since I left Virginia—smart, cute, funny.”
“Hmm.” Louise was having uncomfortable mental pictures of teenagers making love in log cabins. She could remember being at camp herself, and it had been pretty romantic. Although she hadn’t gone that far, that was just her generation. Janie’s was expected to be much more liberated.
“Well, sweetie, I just hope—”
“What—that I stay out of trouble?” Her daughter’s voice dripped with irony. “Hey, get real, Ma. Remember who called whom for what. Compared to you, I am the soul of discretion. Don’t you do anything rash, and if you do,” she added breezily, “give me a call. I’ll come down with my friends and try to get ya out of whatever mess you’re in. Now I really have to go—he’s waiting for me.”
It was a little disheartening to realize her family didn’t trust her to take care of herself. But she surely didn’t need Janie around. It was true the girl had helped her in previous encounters with dangerous people. But even if it turned out Sally had been forced off the road, the killer loose in the county certainly wasn’t focusing on Louise.
Chapter 8
LOUISE HADN’T BEEN WAITING long when the door to the secured area of the sheriff’s department swung open. In the doorway stood the sheriff with a grinning Mark Payne. Two big men with their heads together, intent as lovers—or deal makers. Since they were almost certainly not talking about love, Louise wondered what the deal was. They didn’t notice her.
The sheriff’s final words floated put of the office: “It’s a question of getting others to do the work for you—” Then, with a start, he saw her waiting in the anteroom. Sending the blond-haired developer forth with a friendly pat on the shoulder, Tatum cocked his head as his desk phone ring. Before turning on his heel, he said to Louise, “Be with you in a second, Miz Eldridge—just let me take this call.”
Alone with Mark Payne, Louise found his very size a bit intimidating—among the numerous tall western men she’d met the past few days, he was by far the tallest, perhaps six feet seven. He seemed to realize this, and sat down in the waiting room chair beside her to be closer to her level. He still represented a massive, hulking presence. “Louise Eldridge, right?” He held out a big hand. “I haven’t had a chance to meet you, Louise.” They solemnly shook hands and he studied her with his pale-lashed, hooded eyes. Her imagination deviated dangerously to a scene where this man was laid on a table and given a whole new face, like a Frankenstein monster—new eyes, new skin, new bones…
His words, spoken in a completely normal voice, pulled her back from her fantasy. “I see you’re pretty mixed up in this Porter Ranch thing, whether you want to be or not.”
“I don’t know what you mean, exactly. Do you mean Sally Porter’s accident?”
“Yes, and Jimmy Porter’s shooting,” he continued, in an uninflected voice. “You’re all over the place. Up at Harriet Bingham’s. At the meeting last night.” Sitting this close to him, she could finally see what disturbed her about his face. He had undergone extensive plastic surgery. This, combined with his emotionless delivery, gave her the sense that his feelings were all hidden behind a mask of scars.
“So—you’re one of those women who likes to get her hands in things,” he concluded.
In spite of the rather hostile words, she forced a smile. “I have all the best intentions, Mr. Payne—”
“Oh, just call me Mark,” he said, as if bestowing a gift on her.
“Well, Mark, my producer’s out here in Boulder, we’ve hired a local crew, and we’re shooting quite a lot of footage for my Gardening with Nature television show. Did you know I have a garden show on PBS?”
“Actually, yes. Harriet told me all about you. She’s my great-aunt—now, did you know that? I bet any money Ann Evans told you that.” Ann Evans: a sore point with this man.
“Let’s see,” Louise countered sweetly, “it’s a little confusing, meeting so many new people at one time. Were you up at Porter Ranch the day jimmy Porter—”
“Hey!” He laughed. “No way was I up there—not before the shooting, not in all the fuss that went on afterward. No, we leave stuff like that to our talented sheriff. He’s got a great record for closing cases.” He gave her what he obviously thought was an ingratiating look. “I hear from Harriet you solved some crimes back East.”
“Yes.” She decided a little self-promotion wouldn’t hurt with this man. “Actually, I’ve been commended on occasion by the Fairfax police for my help.” But more often, she thought wryly, I’ve been chewed out for interfering with their investigations. She thought fondly of a red-faced Detective Michael Geraghty.
“What kind of crimes were they?”
She looked Mark Payne over for a minute, then leaned forward dramatically and whispered, “Murders. All murders.”
“Oh.” That was enough for him, and he got up from his chair. Somehow, he couldn’t fit Louise, a woman who solved murders, into his preconceptions of what womankind should be like. “Well, we sure won’t need you
on this one. Earl’s going to solve Jimmy Porter’s death—if he hasn’t already done it.”
“And what about Sally’s accident?”
“Yes, that, too,” he assured her. “Earl will get all that figured out. And I’ll see you around, Louise.”
She watched him saunter out of the room, then turned to see the sheriff standing at the door to the inner offices, staring at her. “Ready, Miz Eldridge?”
He motioned her into a visitor’s chair and sat at his desk. In the institutional setting of the Boulder County Justice Center, this oversized mahogany desk stood out as something special. It was free of clutter, containing only a silver-framed picture, an eight-inch-high geode with an intense blue concavity, and a single tan file folder. She looked over its brown expanse at die sheriff. Without sunglasses and with protruding stomach concealed behind desk front, he was an exceptionally handsome man. And sincere: he looked like a sheriff, albeit some taxpayers may have thought this desk too fancy for a public servant. Then again, she reflected, he probably brought it from home.
He leaned back in the elegant leather swivel chair and frowned importantly. The only flaw in this picture was his nervous fiddling with his fountain pen. He proceeded to sketch out Sally Porter’s accident for Louise. Sally’s car had fallen fifty feet or so down a cliff off the back road to Porter Ranch, with both Sally and her car totaled by the impact. Louise tried to stifle a shudder.
“According to our detective team, it looks like she drove right off into space,” concluded Tatum. “Car crashed onto the edge of the road below, in a little field of wildflowers. Now, I wanted to talk to you because I hear you had dinner with the deceased last night. Wondered just how she acted, and what you talked about.”
Louise shook her head. “There’s nothing much to tell, Sheriff. I was meeting the woman for the first time. She didn’t talk much, and when she did, she was full of reminiscences of her childhood on the ranch, about how she used to ride a horse down to school in Lyons—things’ like that.”
He said, “I’m waitin’ for the team to turn in its report, but I personally am startin’ to believe this is suicide.”
Louise sat very still in her chair. Finally, she said, “That’s entirely your call, Sheriff. All I have to say is, Sally Porter did not sound suicidal. On the contrary, she had a meeting scheduled this morning with her brothers and their family attorney. But draw your own conclusions.”
Tatum leaned forward and looked at her as if she had given the wrong answer. “Fine, I will draw my own conclusions. I could conclude, from what you just said, that the lady was sad and nostalgic over her daddy’s death.” He took a deep breath, as if ready to step into something unpleasant. “Now, Mrs. Eldridge, I know you might feel the need to investigate. I’ve heard about your limited reputation for crime solving. You may have the desire to make this more complicated than it is, like you and Pete did the other day when Jimmy Porter’s body was found. I urge you not to do that. I urge you to withhold judgment until this investigation is over. Believe me, I have a whole slew ’a people investigatin’ both deaths.” He nonchalantly waggled a hand back and forth. “They’re checkin’ for tire marks on that back road, that sort of thing.”
In the back of her mind a question was forming. All those people investigating—why was the sheriff getting so involved in an “accident” case? She said, “I’m glad to hear that, and of course I’ll stay out of it—it’s none of my business. When will the investigation be over?”
“Could take months, maybe years.” He shuffled the papers in the tan folder. Then, as if he had forgotten she were there, he said sourly, “Deaths on Porter Ranch never get resolved.”
“Oh? Are you referring to those deaths years ago…?”
Tatum looked at her sharply. “No, ma’am. Actually, I didn’t mean Sally’s accident; I was talkin’ about Jimmy’s shootin. As for those earlier deaths, they’ve long been closed matters—not very suspicious, if that’s what you’re aimin’ at. Bonnie Porter, for instance, died in a genuine barn fire. And you wouldn’t know just how dangerous fire still is, up there where there isn’t hardly a fire truck or organized water supply for miles.”
She smiled apologetically at him, as if reluctant to bother him. “There’s just a couple of little things, Sheriff, about Sally. Why did she go by the back road? Who else uses that road, besides her brothers and Miss Bingham? And—”
The sheriff put up a hand and half rose out of his chair, as if the interview were over. “Whoa. I’ll answer that, just t’getcha off my back. The boys say Sally always used that road t’go back and forth t’ town; so did the boys when they lived there. Harriet—Miss Bingham—she goes by the main road because it isn’t so steep.” He rested his weight on his hands and looked at Louise, as if expecting her to get up, too. “Is that it for questions?”
She looked serenely at the law officer, unmoving.
“Oh, all right,” he said impatiently, sitting again. “Since you’re so inquisitive, I’ll tell ya something in confidence about the Jimmy Porter case. There’s just plain no evidence in that crime ’cept a couple of spent shells.”
“No tire tracks that day, no cars heard or seen leaving the ranch?”
Louise could see he was having trouble curbing his temper. “I told ya, nope to all of that. Nobody heard a car, because who’d hear it? You only have Harriet and a few ranch hands. The hands start early and leave early, so they were done for the day, and Harriet’s a little deaf. Jimmy got shot a good hour before you got there. As for tracks, ground’s too dry for tire tracks, and poachers like to use little trail vehicles. Fact, there’s a real steep mining trail that comes in between the two ranches up there. We figure maybe they coulda walked up that way, even though it doesn’t appear t’be big enough for a vehicle.”
“Wasn’t it odd that the assailant was so close to him? And what about the trajectory of the bullets?”
“The bullets, you say?” In exasperation, he flipped his pen into the air and it clattered noisily onto the desk surface, where he subdued it with one hand. Tatum seemed aghast at her ignorance. “There aren’t any bullets in a shotgun. There’s shells in a shotgun.” He gave her a jaundiced look. “Well, guess ’twon’t hurt to tell you this, since you already saw it. He took a full charge of shot from about ten foot away. It came in at an odd angle—”
She sat forward. “Is that so…”
“Even you might be impressed, Miz Eldridge,” he interrupted, “by the fact we went back up there and used our laser pointer to get the exact angle so the coroner could make an accurate determination. We figure Jimmy was crouchin’ to spring, and therefore, had his head at a much lower angle than the killer.”
With this, the sheriff got up and swiped his hands together, as if wiping Louise out of his further considerations. “You see how forthcoming I’ve been with you? Now, will you let your curiosity go, you and your friend Pete, and let me get on with my work?” He smiled a broad, toothsome smile, and with one hand smoothed back his iron gray hair. She realized Earl Tatum had gotten a lot of political mileage out of those rugged good looks.
She was dismissed. Before she left the office, however, she leaned over to examine the photograph of the youthful woman in the wide silver frame. “Pretty desk. Pretty young woman. Is she…” Louise stopped before she said the wrong thing; it might not be his daughter.
“That’s my wife,” he said tersely.
Before she got herself in more trouble, Louise left the office and found Ann Evans sitting in the anteroom, wearing a dark linen pantsuit as if in mourning. She was hunkered forward in the chair, blond hair falling over her red-rimmed eyes. She probably felt guilty for getting so angry last night at Sally’s apparent betrayal of her father’s wishes. Now that she thought of it, Louise felt a slight twinge of guilt herself about Sally. She hadn’t told Ann, but in the back of her mind, she’d thought the emotionless Sally might have been her father’s killer. As Louise passed her friend, she put a hand on her shoulder and murmured, “I’ll m
eet you here later.”
If Only the Stones Could Talk: Gardening with Rocks
ROCKS ARE BIG IN GARDEN landscapes these days, both in size and importance. Horticultural design has become more daring, to the point where’ “bold” has become one of the designers’ favorite adjectives. These days, huge rocks and boulders are becoming part of the design plan of private homeowners. With a house under construction, it’s considered a bonanza to find big rocks in the foundation; once, such large, “found” rocks would have been reburied or hauled away. Now, they’re like a gift from the earth—hosed off, then carefully placed where they fit best. Importing rocks from a stone yard is an expensive business, but in the eyes of many people, well worth the money. They are a permanent, no-care, important structural element of a yard-and-garden plan.
Some stand alone, some don’t. Sometimes these massive rocks are set in an array and combined with water accents, such as pools, streams, and waterfalls. Other times, they are used by themselves, or form a simple rock garden. One homeowner bought a cluster of gigantic rocks for his grandchildren to play upon—the idea being to jump from one huge rock to another.
City parks today feature climbing rocks for kids, while other parks treat rocks much more soberly, as objects d’art, much as stone and rock have been treated through the ages, from the gardens of Kyoto to the Alhambra. Today’s design artists will group rocks, or scatter rocks on a site, making them into earthworks. Stonehenge, by the way, is also considered an earthwork, though the people who put it together may have had a spiritual, or possibly scientific, motive, and not an artistic one.
Even the British are getting bold. Not only in America is big rock popular: Even the correct and seemly Wisley Garden, in Surrey, England, has “bold new patterns” that include huge blocks of stone in its rock garden. Artful arrays of plants soften their look, as they perch in the crevices and spill down the rock faces.